


Time

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Meteorstuck, Retcon Timeline, Time - Freeform, mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-08-31 22:50:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8596873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: For thirteen years of your life, time was nothing more than a word used to describe the flow from moment to moment.*****Dave Strider's exploration of time, life, and falling in love.(I have no clue how to summarize)





	

For thirteen years of your life, time was nothing more than a word used to describe the flow from moment to moment. The hours, or days, between meals; the minutes of limbo in between one of your friends messaging you. The length of each of your new mixes, and the stretching of time when your entire body was pain and you had to keep fighting. It was the separation of day and night, of nightmares and the worse things you saw between them.  
You never counted hours, minutes, or seconds, then. You never had a reason to.

 

Time became something more during the game. Your turntables you used to use to make you happy became weapons of time and destruction and death. You had all the time in the world, literally, but each time you sent yourself backwards you knew you were dooming yourself to certain, inescapable death. Dead Daves littered LoHaC, and you wondered if making enough money to impress some crazy alien chic was really worth it. You supposed it was and kept moving, hoping that it would be enough to win.  
It wasn't. 

 

Three years stretch out in front of you, more time than you know how to deal with. Your powers don’t mean too much on this meteor, with no stock exchange to run and no battles to fight. You suppose the others figured that out too, as you found yourself alone more and more often. Your sister and her weird alien almost-girlfriend are off doing whatever odd interspecies shit that too lesbian kids with greatly differing types of genitalia get up to. That girl you had worked so hard to impress is off with her weird alien almost-girlfriend, though you are pretty sure that is classified under some different category weird ass alien romance.  
You spend a lot of time with the mayor- fifty-seven hours and thirty four minutes in the first week- because that little dude is pretty cool and doesn’t make the hours stretch like days the way everything else on this meteor does. And the mayor is great- basically your best friend- but you still get lonely.

 

You think there might be one person on this rock who is even lonelier than you. You hadn’t spared too much time thinking about him before arriving on this meteor - he was the shouty guy with the blocks of grey text who trolled Jade a lot and had some weird hate crush on John. You still didn’t think much of him in your first few weeks there- yeah, you two had a bit of a rivalry over Terezi, but it was clear she didn’t have much interest in dating either of you, so that got old fast. You didn’t like him much either, so the first few times you passed him sitting alone doing nothing, you didn’t say a thing. It wasn’t like it was your job to ensure his happiness. By the fifth time you see him sitting alone- is he reading a romance novel?- you decide, out of the kindness of your magnanimous heart, to invite him to work on can town with you and the mayor, with the addition of pointing out how lonely he looked, in an only slightly condescending way. He glares at you and calls you some choice words, and does not follow you to can town.  
It is seventeen minutes and twenty-eight seconds later that you hear someone sit down beside you and see Karkat Vantas pick up a can.

 

Time has become less of a separation between nightmares and worse things occurring during the day, and more of a separation between can town and Karkat and dreambubbles and whatever they hold. Dreambubbles can fun, you suppose, like that time you played some really strange card game with the mayor, Karkat, that big-horned fairy troll, and some Japanese troll girl, but the can also be… pretty bad. Sometimes sleeping sticks you in memories of your old apartment, of the walls that induce terror in you even now. Sometimes you think you can see a quickly moving figure or a specific, horrible puppet from the corner of your eye, but then it's gone again. Being in that place seems to instantly cloud your mind with simple, shouted commands from your brain, the only things you know can keep you alive. *Get your sword. Don’t turn your back. Be ready for anything. Keep going, even if it hurts. You are not weak. You can do better, be stronger, be a hero. Stop crying. Keep fighting.*  
You spend those times crammed into a corner of the room, sword held in front of you, waiting to be attacked. You never are, but that doesn’t make the waiting any less terrifying.  
It is four hours, one minute, and three seconds before you are freed from the dream, though it felt like days. You manage to drag yourself to Karkat’s room- or “block”, as he calls it- and walk inside. You know he can tell that something has happened, but he doesn’t ask and you don’t tell. He knows you value your privacy, and you value that he will just let you sit in his room, doing nothing, until you feel just a bit better.

 

Time has passed slowly in the past two years you’ve been here, but it hasn’t been nearly as tedious as you expected. You got to show Karkat and the mayor some of your earth games (you don’t think they fully appreciated your phallic hopscotch board, but you were pretty sure it was a work of art), and in return, Karkat shows you his troll romcoms, which are annoying and repetitive in plot, but they make him smile- and cry, too, sometimes, but that's besides the point- and that is what is important. You fall asleep with your head on his lap one time, and when you wake up you can feel him absentmindedly stroking your hair, and you choose not to let him know you’re awake for as long as you can. You two have a lot of feeling jams, and it gets to a point where he fully divulges to you his about his mutant blood color and how he would be killed if anyone had found out, and how he was terrified that his eyes were beginning to change color, even though the planet that would have killed him for it is long dead. To make him feel better, you take off your sunglasses and show him your eyes for the first time. He stares at you for a second and you are worried you made a mistake and that he would leave you, until he quietly tells you he thinks they are beautiful. A moment later he realizes what he said, and he turns red and shouts some rambling curse words, but it is too late and you can already feel a warm feeling in your chest.  
It is two years, one month, and five days after arriving on the meteor that you realize you have feelings for Karkat Vantas.

 

Time with Karkat passes quickly, a stark difference from the hours that stretch on and on when you are alone. Every moment you spend in his presence, every time your hand lingers on his arm for five, six, seven seconds, every real genuine smile you give to him is golden in the moment, but once you are alone in the dark of your bedroom, your brain unravels each gesture and touch and tells you how wrong it is. You are a Strider. You don’t smile at the long-winded rantings of angry trolls, you don’t tell people your weaknesses and fears, and you certainly don’t fall in love with boys. You have liked girls your entire life, you have always known that is the way it would be for you. You couldn’t possibly be anything other than straight. Bro would *kill* you.  
After two weeks, four days, and fourteen hours of wallowing in fear and self-pity, you decide to tell someone. Not Karkat, of course. You decide Rose, your somewhat distanced ecto-sister, would be a good place to start. 

 

Time with Rose is paired with tea- at least there is no alcohol in that- and lots of psychoanalyzation. You tell her of your residual worry over your dead Bro and your fear over your new feelings, and how you are one hundred and ten percent sure that you are not gay. Her eyes widen in surprise when you tell her about Bro, and she tells you she is so sorry- she never knew you were abused. You tell her you weren't abused- you and your Bro just fought sometimes, with swords, and maybe he didn't take you to the hospital when you had a broken arm, and maybe he didn't ever make you real food, and maybe you were terrified in that home, but...  
You realize you were abused.  
She gives you a moment to sort out the severity of your realization, and offers you were sympathy and apologizes for not noticing back when you were kids and helping you get out of the situation, which is all very sincere for her, seeing as she is usually full of sarcasm and snark. Once you have calmed down a bit, she tells you she doesn't think that you're gay, which is both a relief and a bit odd, because didn't you just tell her you had feelings for Karkat, who is, of course, a guy? She tells you, instead, that she believes you are probably bisexual.  
Oh.  
You aren't sure how you didn't think of that sooner. The trolls are all bisexual- or pansexual, you think the better word would be- and it isn't like you are unfamiliar with the term or anything. You were too busy worrying about whether or not you were gay that you didn't even consider another option. You aren't sure this fixes your worries, but Rose assures you that she supports you and so does everyone else on the meteor- except maybe that weird clown guy, but honestly no one gives two shits about his opinion- and she says she is fairly sure that Karkat returns your feelings. You hadn't even thought to be worried about that, you realize, because of all the time you spent convincing yourself you weren't gay, you never considered actually having a relationship with the object of your affection. Despite your now-forming doubts, she makes you promise you will tell him soon, and you do. She sends you off by telling you to use protection when you engage in gay alien sex.  
Three days, five hours, and fourteen minutes after that conversation, you finally muster up the courage to tell Karkat.

 

Time passes unbearably slow as you manage to ramble out a series of barely coherent words, trying to explain to Karkat everything you feel for him- which really, really doesn’t sound cool. The look on his face is somewhat confused, but also highly attentive to your words. Your brain won’t stop telling you that he won’t feel the same, that he is going to hate you for what you are saying, that you have ruined your friendship, but you tell it to be quiet. It is too late to take back what you are saying now and you just have to be confident enough in your friendship to believe that if Karkat rejects you, you still mean enough to him that he wouldn’t cut off all ties with you. While lost in your thoughts, your speech has gone far off-topic, and now you are on some tangent about fire trucks- how did you even get there?- when Karkat finally cuts you off. “Dave.”  
You notice you have one hand over your heart and the other raised in the air as if you were making a very dramatic monologue. You lower both and answer, “Yeah?”  
“Shut the fuck up.” And then he proceeds to kiss you.  
It has been some minutes and some seconds since he pressed his lips to yours, but you are kissing Karkat Vantas, so, for once, time doesn’t matter that much.

**Author's Note:**

> So I never really write fanfiction but I got a prompt to write about time in my writing class, so how could I not? Sorry if this is really out of character; I wrote it pretty quickly. Anyway I would really appreciate it if you would tell me what you think.


End file.
